Suddenly it all makes sense now

Via Accidental Penis

The conspiracy revealed

Now that we're two months into this oil spill thing, I think we can all be clear of one thing: it was a conspiracy. Shady forces colluding with even shadier forces to dump bazillions of barrels of oil into the gulf in order to further their goals. Yet no one wants to mention this for fear they'll be labeled an insane douchebag or as ripping off Rush Limbaugh's material. Thankfully we have North Carolina GOP congressional candidate and teabagger Bill Randall to make the case for us. Oh yeah, you knew it would be a teabagger.

"Personally, and this is purely speculative on my part and not based on any fact, but personally I feel there is a possibility that there was some sort of collusion. I don’t know how or why, but in that situation, if you have someone from a company violating a safety process and the government signing off on it, excuse me, maybe they wanted it to leak."

“But then it got beyond what was anticipated, and we had an explosion and loss of life. And, oh man, then we have panic. Is there a cover up going on? I’m not saying there necessarily is. But I think there’s enough facts on the table for people that (they) really need to do some investigative research and find out what went on with that and get a subpoena of records and everything else.”

He doesn't want to suggest there was a conspiracy or say that there's evidence of it, he just wants to suggest there was a conspiracy and say that there's evidence of it.

Well now that he's lifted the veil on this nefarious collusion, we here at These Bastards would like to offer up this suggestion of the way it all went down. We're not saying this is exactly how it went down, but this is just what we've transcribed form the tapes we have of the meeting.

Barack Obama: Listen, I've talked it over with the lizard people, the reploids, the Trilateral Commission, the Ruling Commission of the Bilderburg Group, and the Seven Jew Bankers in the bunker under Zurich... they agree: it's time to spill a shitload of oil into the ocean.

Tony Hayward: Agreed. While this would normally seem like a horrible idea that would both cripple our company financially, make us extremely unpopular, and hamper the future of offshore drilling as a whole, we thing this is a great step forward.

Obama: As do I, even though at first glance engineering a massive environmental catastrophe miles underground and starting the largest oil spill in world history would seem counterproductive to my goals and make me seem weak, this is clearly the best step forward. Because we all know what will happen if we spill an inconcievable amount of crude into the Gulf...

Both together: Profit! And power!

(both laugh maniacally)

Hayward: I'll call Halliburton, Transocean, the merpeople, and Bigfoot and we'll get this started.

Obama: I'll start counting the money and consolidating power.

Hayward: Wait, but what if some freedom loving patriot, caught up in the spirit of 1776, decides to expose this conspiracy during the election season?

Obama: Hah! It'll never happen! Our plan is too brilliant!

(both laugh uproariously)

Obama: Now let's talk about that slush fund...

This all makes so much sense. It was all so obvious. Thank God we have Bill Randall to light the way.

The overarching chicken conspiracy

Sue Lowden is running for the GOP nomination for Senate in Nevada. In her campaign she has clearly seen an opportunity to make headway in the race and a potential showdown with Harry Reid by criticizing health reform. Being a Republican, of course she's ranting about repealing it. This is not notable. What is notable is the system she offered to replace it: a barter system. Furthermore: a barter system in which chickens could be exchanged for health care.

We at These Bastards have been long supporters of the agrarian barter economy. Mostly because paper money will have no meaning once society collapses, civilization falls, and the flesh reavers come in the night for your children. But we only think of an agrarian barter system as a means for a post-apocalyptic scenario. Sue Lowden asks: why not before? I have to say we agree. If we can get everyone to learn the basics beforehand, the transition to a full barter economy will be easier for the Hobo Council of Elders to implement.

To that end, some helpful enterprising soul has created the website The Lowden Plan, which you can use to figure out what your next medical procedure will cost in chickens. Prostate cancer? 3,514 chickens. Appendectomy? 1,019 chickens. Mammograms? A surprisingly cheap 18 chickens. Women definitely get bang for their chicken buck. Colon cancer will cost you a veritable poultry war crime of 8,738 chickens.

But this does make you ask some serious questions. Why is Sue Lowden so eager to use chickens as our new system of currency? What are her ties to KFC and Chick-Fil-A?

Not to sound crazy or reactionary but... THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS! THIS IS HOW THEY TAKE OVER! We need chickens to trade for medical care and who has all the chickens? Once day we're just sitting around having insurance companies run our health care, the next day the Colonel and all his buddies run it.

My God... I think we all knew in the back of our minds that one day franchise chicken restaurants would make their move to control America, but who knew that this would be the means they would choose: by controlling our very health. This must be why KFC launched the Double Down: to increase our need for serious medical attention. Then they get their plant Lowden to switch us over to the chicken system and they might as well run everything.

In fact, I think we can trace the insurance battle over health care and the financial crisis to the chicken barons in their golden palaces. It all makes so much sense now. The insurance companies, finance industry and chicken consortium have been working together the whole time! They have access to the highest levels of government:


This is chilling, people. We're through the looking glass. God help us all.

This explains so much

We've all taken our fair share of shots at the Bush Administration for their conduct during the eight years they prosecuted the war on terror. Hell, some of us have taken more than our share of shots. But for far too long we've been laboring under the misapprehension that they were acting with some sort of nefarious disregard for the laws of this country. That their actions were a means to some overarching sinister end. Well it turns out they weren't. They were just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid. Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, fucking stupid.

A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.
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The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree -- and whose former lawyer calls him a "habitual liar engaged in fraud."

Working out of a Reno, Nevada, software firm called eTreppid Technologies, Montgomery took in officials in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and convinced them that technology he invented -- but could not explain -- was pulling terrorist-produced "bar codes" from Al Jazeera television broadcasts. Using his proprietary technology, those bar codes could be translated into longitudes and latitudes and flight numbers. Terrorist leaders were using that data to direct their compatriots about the next target.

Eventually the CIA found out he was utterly and completely full of shit. But not before the Bush Administration had already been using his proclamations as means for action and raising threat levels. And not before he inked another $3 million dollar contract with the Air Force in January. At the very least, no one in the CIA gave Montgomery a nuke when he claimed he could build a Cylon detector.

Seems the only code this guy found out was the one embedded in the Bush Administration: tell them what they want to hear in a way that can benefit their aims and you get millions of dollars. In retrospect, it was not a hard code to crack. But this explains so much. A man claimed he had a magic bean and before anyone could verify if he was as obvious a con man as he seemed, the government was handing him millions and acting the information he divined from said bean. I think our jaws would drop if we ever found out how much money, time, and action was taken on similar ideas and various magic protective rocks.

But just in case you were thinking "Surely this stupid scam I conceived of couldn't possibly fool the CIA and US Government to the tune of millions of dollars", you're either underselling your idea or overselling the intelligence of the United States. Both, as we've learned, are mistakes.

Fake ID! Kenyan! Moselm!

We all know that the President is a foreign sleeper agent who, after his birth in Kenya, was smuggled into this country, given falsified documents forging his US citizenship, indoctrinated in the ways of communism, socialism, Islam, and radical black nationalism, set with the fairly easy task of becoming a viable Presidential candidate, and then going and getting elected...with help from George Soros and ACORN. I know it, you know it, Orly Taitz knows it, and Sarah Palin knows it.

But as we try to unravel this nefarious global conspiracy (the body count of those who have tried to expose this truth has to be somewhere in the tens of thousands), we never thought that little Barry Soetoro himself would provide us with a gun so smoking, that the truth can barely be seen. From his Kennedy Centers speech to Mossad agent Mel Brooks.

Unfortunately, many of the punch lines that have defined Mel Brooks' success cannot be repeated here. I was telling him that I went to see Blazing Saddles -- -- when I was 10. And he pointed out that I think, according to the ratings, I should not have been allowed in the theater. That's true. I think I had a fake ID. But the statute of limitations has passed.

Where did you get this fake ID? Was it from the same fake ID that was used to gain you US citizenship... BECAUSE YOU WERE BORN IN MOMBASA!?!? Fake birth certificates, fake ID's, and Mel Brooks vehicles starring Gene Wilder and Slim Pickens? My God, it all makes so much sense now. This is going in the file. This will be part of the new batch of lawsuits. You got too cocky, Mr. Soetoro, now we have enough to take you down.

Chart of the day

What is this? Well, it's something you have to expand to an absurd degree to even comprehend. Frankly, you need an epic powerpoint presentation to have it make sense to you. It's our escalation counter insurgency strategy and it has more arrows in it than Custer's chest. Yes, it's an exact diagram of why our new strategy in Afghanistan, unlike all the others that came before it, is going to succeed.

On one hand, I'm at least glad it's complicated and filled with phrases like "Influence neutral-minded individuals to adopt a supportive disposition". It certainly best the Bush era power point display of "Put troops in ---> win". On the other hand, if this is the complex web of plans we have to successfully negotiate just to have a shot at success....then wouldn't all those billions be better spent just instead building some colossal monument to futility? Ah well, just take solace in the fact that someone in our government put together this complex orgy of arcane sentences and meandering arrows, then sat back and said to himself "You genius, this makes perfect sense."

This makes too much sense

Another day, another person who just doesn't understand that military spending doesn't count because war is free. This time the uneducated sap is Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He thinks, get this, that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us too much money. So much so that when the President announces his Afghanistan troop increase, he's going to suggest and try to make it so that the cost of that escalation is bidget neutral and doesn't add to the deficit. Ha! Deficit neutrality is only reserved for things that might help the American peasant class, Dave. This is about blowing up brown people what good, so not only is it free, but you make the baby Jesus cry if you vote against it or impede it in any way. Seriously, a war tax?

"There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," House Appropriations Chairman David Obey told ABC News. "If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to pay for it."

Comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam, Obey said that both were long-standing civil wars and that, in each case, the United States found itself with an unreliable partner on the ground.

"On the merits, I think it is a mistake to deepen our involvement," Obey said. "But if we are going to do that, then at least we ought to pay for it. Because if we don't, if we don't pay for it, the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every initiative we have to rebuild our own economy."

"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well," Obey said, "by having a war surtax."

Taxing our elite to raise billions to pay for a war? My good man, the only word for that is class warfare. Sure it makes good sense, is deficit neutral, and forcing government to pay for our military shenanigans by taking it out of all of our pocketbooks with a big bolded line on our paycheck that says "WAR TAX!" would actually force this country to pay attention to things politicians do in their name, but these are also the reasons it will never pass. Instead it will be relegated to the "too good an idea to ever be made into a law" pile with single payer health care, comprehensive financial sector regulation, and a "No Texans" policy in government.

So, nice try Mr. Obey, you came up with a good idea that makes a lot of sense and seems to have some support. Unfortunately it makes a little too much sense, as well as forcing hundreds of members of Congress to confront their absolutely hypocritical double standard on deficits and spending. So sadly the halls of Government will echo with people laughing at you and calling your idea "gay". But it was a nice try, Dave, it was a nice try.

You should probably watch this

The New Yorker's James Surowiecki interviews chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Elizabeth Warren. You may remember her as the woman who has no judicial of legislative authority to actually do anything about what she sees, but still is willing to go and and scream till she's blue in the face about how, say, we won't ever know where TARP funds went or how they were used, that this crisis has largely assaulted on the middle class, all of our efforts were geared towards rescuing the top of the system while leaving the bottom to fend for itself, the inconsistencies in the Detroit/Wall Street bailouts, and why there needs to be a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with real power to do something.

That is largely the point of this interview, not only why we should have a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but what regulation is necessary to move forward with as little of the "world collapsing financial crises" as possible.



Well said. Perhaps she should run for higher office.

Kristof, you poor naive bastard

Ahh, Nick Kristof. Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas, what to do with you? You're a good man, write good columns on important things, and you seem to be respected. But Christ are you naive. I bet you thought you were pretty damn clever when you pointed out the eagerness of celebrity seeking political degenerates like Joe Lieberman to spend hundreds of billions and thousands of lives in pointless wars, but unwilling to spend billions on health care and saving thousands of lives. Hell, I've made that point a few times here on the Internet's only political commentary and fake news blog, These Bastards.

While I am accusing you of stealing my thoughts and a lawsuit is forthcoming, where your fault lies is in the fact that you actually expect a reasoned answer for the disconnect and think that by pointing out this seeming incongruity you can somehow shame our elected betters, or mainstream media betters, or apathetic voters into noticing and punishing those who transgress this hypocrisy. You poor poor bastard.

So if President Obama dispatches another 30,000 or 40,000 troops, on top of the 68,000 already there, that would bring the total annual bill for our military presence there to perhaps $100 billion — or more. And we haven’t even come to the human costs.

As for health care reforms, the 10-year cost suggests an average of $80 billion to $110 billion per year, depending on what the final bill looks like.
...
On the other hand, the health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

My God, what is this? Is it your first year covering politics? Doesn't this seem odd? No, it seems perfectly normal. You want to know why we're so eager to spend a trillion dollars a year on defense spending and wars? Because that money doesn't count. Yup, no matter how much money we spend on blowing up brown people and building aircraft carriers, it never, ever, ever counts as spending money. In fact there is no logic ascribed to any dollar spent on defense. I mean that's why President Obama can cut the rate at which military spending increases and still everyone pretends like he's actually cut military spending. That's why $100 billion more for a war that's already costing hundreds of billions a year is perfectly fine, while $90 billion a year for health care is a crippling debt that we're foisting on our children, who'll have to give 5 cent handjobs in alleys to Chinese businessmen just to pay off the interest. The same principle works for tax cuts for the rich. Those don't count either, no matter how much they increase deficits.

But this is the key reason that politicians love spending on wars but hate spending on improving the lives of people, Nick: there is no part of the health care bill that will make a politician feel like his dick is huge or that he is, in fact, the manliest, burliest fucking manly man on the planet. Even the smallest defense appropriations bill does that a million, or should I say trillion, times over. You ever tried to chestbump a dude after cutting heealth care costs for Americans? Awwwwkwaaaaard. On the other hand nothing is better than a high five after a predator drone wipes out some mountain village.

The reason people like the world's greatest man, Joe Lieberman, won't vote for decent health care reform, I mean besides petty spite, is because it just doesn't get their cocks rock hard. No one gets their cocks hard over health reform, except maybe Ron Wyden, he's.....a little weird. This is the biggest failing of the health reform movement. Obama never walked around talking about the wood he got when he thought of saving 45,000 lives a year. There were no high fives and screams of "Boo-yah" when CBO estimates came in projecting a decrease in the deficit, and the fight to improve people's health was never described in terms of an comprehensive international effort to wipe out brown terrorists that live inside our bodies.

So I'm sorry Nick, this is just standard operating procedure. It is the way things will always be: fiscally irresponsible. Now I only hope we can spend the $90 billion we would have used on health care to fund some even larger TOW missile that shoots out a giant fireworks explosion in the shape of a large dragon every time we hit a suspected terrorist. That, and only that, would show the fiscal seriousness of our Senate.

Health care commentary from a guy who wore a sock on his hand

From an article on Fox News' new online video strategy, comes this little exchange from a Fox & Friends discussion on health care.

Referring to an article he recently read in The Atlantic Monthly, Foley says he hopes some kind of health care bill passes, but is concerned. “I’ve known that something needed to be done for a long time,” he muses. “I think it’s going to come down to a watered-down bill that won’t help anybody as much as it could.”
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But Foley continues earnestly, explaining that he’s had his share of issues with insurance companies in the past, given the somewhat violent nature of his work. “People in our network were getting injured too often,” he says.

Now, "What's so special about that, besides the fact that it sounded reasoned and was accidentally allowed on TV", you might ask. Well first off, someone said it on Fox News. Secondly, someone said it on Fox & Friends, which might be the dumbest morning show ever created. Thirdly, the "Foley" who said it, was pro-wrestler Mick Foley, aka Mankind, Dude Love, and Cactus Jack. That's right, and man who did this

was not only on a morning show to discuss health care reform as it is currently situated in bill form, he did so in an intelligent manner using things he had read and his own personal experiences, defying all known logic of TV news commentary.

I guess the question that remains is, if Mick Foley can go through a lifetime of brutal wrestling matches, chair beatings, table smashings, all maner of encounters with barbed wire and thumbtacks, and still discuss health care intelligently on the TV, what the hell kind of vicious beatings have the rest of the pundits endured that has rendered them unable to? What the hell must have our elected betters in the Senate have endured?

So, Fox? How about instead of another intelligence affronting hour of Hannity, you instead stage a Hell-in-the-Cell match between Foley and, say, Steve "Dr. Death" Williams. You can rename him Dr. Death Panel. The winner/one with the most blood left in his body, will get to deliver a 15 minute prepared speech on health legislation. Think of the ratings! Plus, It might just be the most informative thing that has ever been on your network. Give it a think, we'll talk later.

This explains everything

via No Happy Medium

What does England know anyway?

When governments around the world had to bail out and take control of all the banks that were failing, some naively thought that one of the problems inherent in that solution was that the banks and financial institutions that were saved fell into that troublesome "too big to fail" category and that something further needed to be done. What morons. Because we're America and we know better, we decided we needed more "too big to fail" financial giants, or at least the same number as before. The dumber countries (read: everywhere) decided they needed less. Like England, for example.

The British government -- spurred on by European regulators -- is forcing the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Northern Rock to sell off parts of their operations. The Europeans are calling for more and smaller banks to increase competition and eliminate the threat posed by banks so large that they must be rescued by taxpayers, no matter how they conducted their business, in order to avoid damaging the global financial system.

The move to downsize some of Britain's largest banks comes as U.S. politicians are debating whether American banks should also be required to shrink. The Obama administration has maintained that large banks should be preserved because they play an important role in the economy and that taxpayers instead should be protected by creating a new system for liquidating large banks that run into problems. But Britain's decision already is being cited by a growing chorus of experts, including prominent bankers and economists, who want the United States to pursue a similar approach.

Pussies! Thank God we're so large that we can probably still counter their nonsense and financially drag them down with us again when the time comes. I think the problem here is that UK banks lost so much money that they just didn't have enough left to make campaign contributions to British lawmakers and hire enough lobbyists to prevent meaningful legislative action. Thankfully we don't have that problem here. Hell, the people in charge of US creation, enforcement, and oversight of these regulations all worked in the financial sector (read: Goldman-Sachs), so they don't even need to be lobbied all that hard.

No no, the clear and intelligent path here is not to do anything to prevent stuff like the complete financial collapse of the world from happening. What we need to do is to make laws to expedite the clean-up and rebuilding period after our next inevitable destruction. Even what laws we do have need to be needlessly weakened for little understandable benefit. If you're out trying to prevent something you're just contributing negative energy, what with your continued whining about what bad things are going to happen and obvious, soon to be bursting bubbles on the horizon. No the best solution is to keep everything the same, but streamline the ascension of the post-financial apocalypse hobo hierarchy.

England...I just don't get why you're doing this. I mean when the next global crisis hits, oh...next year probably, and you're relatively unscathed because of extensive preventative measure you've decided to undertake, well, then you're just fucked. Because when we learn of your relative idyllyc existence (you know: one without the brutal hand to hand combat of the Thunderdome, backbiting shantytown politics, and the daily fights for canned goods) we're just going to pile into our dilapidated boats, arm ourselves with guns and spears, and come subjugate you in a manner befitting our new brutal existence. And your people won't be ready for it...because you made sure they avoided total societal collapse. Now who wishes they didn't break up "too big to fail" banks and pass sensible laws? Not the Hobo Council of Elders or the New Flesh Reaver Militia, that's who. We're going to crush you so hard.

This man is crazy

Last night in the House former soldier Rep. Patrick Murphy (D- PA) decided to organize a group of floor speeches that supported the repeal of the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Of course that meant those who opposed it could come up to speak as well and.....we'll say they didn't disappoint. That is if you find bizarre, rambling, incoherent rants about bestiality and Nazi's happening on the floor of the House to be a non-disappointing development.

Let Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX...of course) explain. After decrying DADT as perverse social experimentation, he turned his real to what he really feared: all those gay dudes who he knows totally want him and are going make "the butt sex" with him how outraged he is that we're considering laws like the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill and making hate crimes illegal..

If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions, [...] pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most would say is perverse sexual orientations
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But people have always been willing to give up their liberties, their freedoms in order to gain economic stability. It happened in 1920 and 1930’s. Germany gave up their liberties to gain economic stability and they got a little guy with a mustache, who was the ultimate hate monger.

That's right, if we take away people's rights to use murder and violence as a form of terrorism to intimidate gays then we're just on a slippery slope towards legalizing bestiality, necrophilia, and pedophilia. Hate crimes are an American right and if we take that right away we're going to become Nazi's. He then meandered into a discussion on how he's not a racist because he voted for Alan Keyes, before walking away, leaving a stunned caucus to contemplate what the fuck it is they just listened to. So...uh yeah. Unless we keep throwing gays out of the military and keep allowing hate crimes, we're going to turn into Nazi Germany where fucking dead underage animals replaces church. Makes sense to me.

Quote of the day

Don't take my word for it that going with a co-op plan over a public insurance option isn't really going to do anything to stem costs, I'm just a blogger/international demolitions expert. Maybe you should take the word of a guy like North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad. Who's he? Only the guy who designed the co-op plan:

ROBERTS: What would they do to reduce costs? Because that is one of the central issues of health care reform.

CONRAD: Well, the important thing is they’d provide more competition. … Beyond that, I think it’s very important not to over-promise here. [...]

ROBERTS: So nothing really in driving down the costs of service then?

CONRAD: Uhhh, no.

Well then, it's no wonder it seemingly pushed a public plan out of the picture. I mean it's not like dealing with health care costs was an important thing.

Bill Watterson: Oddly prescient

If you look at this image upside down, it reads "kill yourself"

Lemme UP-Grade, UP-Grade ya

Today brings good news for Catholics both practicing and failed, as the church has announced the return of both partial and plenary indulgences to the official list of services offered.

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

For those of you who unlike Matthew and I were raised outside the Catholic prison faith, indulgences are basically upgrades, first-class tickets on a non-stop flight to everlasting peace in the kingdom of god.

You see, while the Catholic Church can get you into heaven by listening to you confess your sins and telling you to rattle off a few Hail Marys -- prayer is the church's third most-popular form of currency behind only guilt and, well, currency -- they make no promises about arrival time. Dying without sin on your soul can get you to Heaven, sure, but you'll probably be spending a little time in purgatory, a boring, lifeless void. Think Cleveland without LeBron James and the Rock Hall.

But through this special offer, and for just a few extra prayers or pilgrimages, you too can ascend straight to heaven alongside the clergy who alone have the power to nudge Saint Peter in the ribs and say "Let this one through." Take heed, sinners.